Fiscal Cliff deal passes the House, goes to President for signature

Only one-third of the Republican caucus voted for the deal, but Boehner voted for it – it’s their deal. They own it.

First the Republicans who voted yes, which includes Paul Ryan, who seemed opposed earlier in the day. Eric Cantor, another member of the House leadership, did not vote for it. Here’s a sense of the vote right before it ended – the final tally was 257-167:

But my favorite is Grover Norquist, who tries to pull a definition-of-is-is:

Good to hear, Grover, because that means Republicans can let every tax cut expire in the future, and so long as they vote for a new tax cut, worth a grand total of $1 dollar, they’ll be keeping their “pledge.” So the Norquist pledge just became meaningless, from the mouth of Norquist himself. That may be the biggest victory the President got out of this deal yet.

John AravosisFollow me on Twitter: @aravosis | @americablog | @americabloggay | Facebook | Instagram | Google+ | LinkedIn. John Aravosis is the Executive Editor of AMERICAblog, which he founded in 2004. He has a joint law degree (JD) and masters in Foreign Service from Georgetown; and has worked in the US Senate, World Bank, Children's Defense Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, and as a stringer for the Economist. He is a frequent TV pundit, having appeared on the O'Reilly Factor, Hardball, World News Tonight, Nightline, AM Joy & Reliable Sources, among others. John lives in New York City, and is the cofounder of TimeToResign.com. Bio, article archive.

Share This Post

Gosh, once again the Democrats pulled defeat from the jaws of victory, and OBAMA led the way. who needs Republicans? not when you have Democrats like Obama who gives away the candy store, and just think. We have the debt ceiling to deal with in 2 months.

what will Obama give away this time? wait and see. Social Security, Medicare, gosh Obama has proved himself to be a worthy Republilcan negotiator, for the REpublicans, not the Middle Class.

I honestly did not think the House GOP was going to pass the bill. Or more to the point, allow it to come to a vote.

I guess Boehner saw the writing on the wall, that it was going to be this Senate bill — sweetened with all kinds of permanent goodies, including roughly 80% of the Bush tax cuts — or nothing. The result of which almost certainly would have tipped the U.S. economy into a deeper triple-dip recession.

Of course, he probably told his conference that they still have their debt ceiling hostages, and plan to use the situation to the utmost advantage.

JozefAL

Bryan Fischer certainly knows how to be funny when he wants to be. “The Republican Party of Ronald Reagan is lying in smoldering ruins on the floor of the House of Representatives.” As if the current GOP bears any similarity to what Reagan’s GOP (considering he raised taxes how many times during his two terms in office?). Fischer must’ve been thinking of the MYTHICAL GOP that Reagan led–the same way modern GOPers think that Reagan was as teabag nutty as they are (and completely ignoring any and all evidence that proves the exact opposite).

Stupid

The best thing that happened to Republicans was getting this deal done, and that Obama folded despite his holding all the cards. Why?

Simple: had the deal not been made, the tax cuts would have expired, and taxes would have gone up for everybody – temporarily. Immediately upon the new Congress starting up in the new year, the Democrats would have pushed for a tax cut for all Americans making less than $250K per year (the number Obama campaigned on for months). This could have been accomplished procedurally in the Senate by taking an already passed House bill and attaching the tax cut to it.

It then would have gone back to the House and put the GOP in the unenviable position of either: 1) giving Obama a victory by implementing the $250K maximum for tax cuts he campaigned for all along, OR 2) vote AGAINST a tax cut.

FURTHERMORE, in three months, we’ll be coming to yet another economic hostage situation in that the debt ceiling issue arises again. The GOP will hold the credit rating and solvency of the entire nation hostage. By giving on the tax rates issue, Obama just gave up any leverage he had. Now, the only thing that Democrats will have to offer the GOP will be cuts to entitlements, like the chained CPI which Obama already signaled that he’s willing to cave on.

Just pathetic from a Democratic viewpoint. So pathetic that it makes you wonder about their true intentions.

Quiddity

This deal does not reflect well on Obama.Take one example: the estate tax.

The estate tax, as put forth by Bush, lasted until 2010 and had a lowest rate of 45% and a highest exemption of $3.5 million. (In 2010 there was no estate tax.)

Obama, when he extended the Bush tax cuts in late 2010, lowered the estate tax to 35% and raised the threshold to $5 million. Obama owns that. Bush had nothing to do with it.

And now we are treated to bullshit from the White House like this official statement:

“Raises tax rates on the wealthiest estates: The agreement raises the tax rate on the wealthiest estates – worth upwards of $5 million per person – from 35 percent to 40 percent, in contrast to Republican proposals to continue the current estate tax levels.”

Yeah, it raises the rate, but not from the Bush schedule. It raises it from Obama’s own low number (and keeps the exemption at his high number). Talk about negotiating with yourself!

The estate tax was only one part of the deal but I think it sheds light on how Obama operates. Who in the White House said, “Let’s start with the schedule that we ourselves got enacted in 2010, and not start from the Bush schedule”?

A pure extension of the Bush estate tax law would have been better than this.

The estate tax brings in serious money and can act as a modest brake on income inequality. Now it’s mostly gone as an effective revenue source. That’s one reason Jennifer Rubin loves it.

We are in the battle of our lives

We must fight back, and we CAN win this. But it will take hard work and time. I am already making preparations for a wide-ranging campaign to fight Trump's Cabinet appointees and supreme court nominations. As part of that effort, when my lease is up in NYC, I will be moving back to Washington, DC, to take the fight directly to Donald Trump.

Won't you please support my work with a generous donation? And then, follow me on Twitter and Facebook, where I do a lot of micro-blogging in addition to here on AMERICAblog.